Walter
Schenck will discuss “Getting a Cosmos of
Creativity on Paper” Mar. 8 at NFW Meeting
at Riverside VyStar

BookMark
to host Annette Simon,
Jan-Phillipe Sendker in
March

FWA
blog: March will either come in like a line
from Spillane or go out like Helen Steiner
Rice…or vice versa

Prize-winning
workshop to start new series of classes
beginning Mar. 26

Stuff
from a Writer’s Quill — Gertrude
Stein

Stuff
from Hither and Yon

FWA
news about meetings, contests, and workshops

Prize-winning
workshop to start new series of classes
beginning Mar. 26

The
Wrong Stuff – Howard Denson

Writers
Born This Month

Meetings
of NFW and Other Groups

Useful
Links

Need
someone to critique a manuscript?

The
Write Staff

Walter
Schenck will discuss “Getting a Cosmos

of
Creativity on Paper” Mar. 8

at NFW
Meeting at Riverside VyStar

.The North Florida Writers
will hear Walter Schenck at the Mar. 8 meeting speak
about “Getting a Cosmos of Creativity on Paper.” The
meeting will be at the VyStar Credit Union at 760
Riverside Ave., next to the Fuller Warren Bridge and
Saturday’s Riverside Arts Market. The meeting, which
is free and open to the public, will begin at noon and
end before 3 p.m.

.

Schenck has had five books
simultaneously in Amazon’s top 100 e-book Best
Sellers List. All his books have hit the top 2% of
e-book sales at Kobo. His latest book, “Priests
and Warriors,” hit # 30 on Amazon e-book Best
Seller list while his other book, “A Comprehensive
Analysis to the Synoptic Gospels” consistently
reached the top 100 (#28, 39, 50, etc.) Now, he
wants to write an action-packed sequel to “The
Birdcatcher,” a suspense thriller. .

The writer finds a
connection between the outdoors and writing. He
says that, when he is planting trees, setting
pavers, running sprinkler systems, landscaping,
working with marble and travertine, or
constructing a Koi pond, he realizes his place
within the world and the things he wants to
accomplish in his writings.

.

Not only does he engage in
rigorous physical activity, he also works with
computers. He earned his Cisco CCNA, Microsoft
MCSE, A+, and Advanced Certifications from Florida
State University and Florida State College. As a
senior he took three advance master’s literary
courses. He carried this hard-work ethic, becoming
quite the salesman. While working at one of the
country’s largest banks, he became one of the
highest paid producers in the mortgage world.
“Brawn is great, but thinking is where it’s at,”
he says..

Schenck was awarded the
Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal for
his service in Vietnam, where he was
a rifleman and armored personnel vehicle
driver.

For the
critiques, someone other than the author of respective
works will read aloud the submissions (up to 20
double-spaced TYPED pages of prose, and reasonable
amounts of poetry or lyrics). Authors may not defend
their work, but they may attach questions they would
like answered (e.g., “Is the scene on the beach
convincing?”). Authors should listen to the words and
rhythms of their creations.

.

Future meeting
dates and locales:

.

Apr. 12 –
noon, Riverside VyStar – Speaker: Nancy Beeler,

May 10 – noon,
Riverside VyStar – Speaker: Andy Rojas

June 14 –
noon, Riverside VyStar – Speaker: TBA

BookMark to
host Annette Simon,

Jan-Phillipe
Sendker in March

.

Owner Rona Brinlee says The
BookMark (220 1st St., Neptune Beach) will host
visits from friends of Robot Zombie Frankenstein
and the author of a sequel to “The Art of Hearing
Heartbeats.”

Annette Simon, “Robot Burp Head
Smartypants!” (Candlewick), Sunday, March
2, 2 p.m. -- The mechanical friends
from Robot Zombie Frankenstein! are back with a
new game - and the thirst to win it. Burp to ten?
Easy! Burp by tens while blindfolded, juggling, and
skateboarding? Simple! Now add the alphabet?
REBOOT! Kirkus calls it an "effervescent
return." This is a particularly special event for
us since Annette is part of The BookMark family.

Jan-Phillipe Sendker, “A Well-Tempered
Heart” (Other Press), Wednesday, March 19, 7
p.m. -- Sendker's follow-up to “The
Art of Hearing Heartbeats” picks up the story a
decade after Julia Win traveled to Burma, seeking her
missing father. Now a high-powered attorney mourning
the end of her engagement, Julia has started hearing
the voice of a bereft, heart-broken woman in her head.
This voice propels Julia back to Burma, where she is
reunited with her half-brother, U Ba, who believes the
voice belongs to Nu Nu, a woman who recently dropped
dead while out for a walk with her sister. U Ba and
Julia seek out Nu Nu's sister, who tells them the sad
tale of Nu Nu's life.

When you turn your calendar
page tomorrow, we'll be only weeks away from the
first day of spring. Has the groundhog seen its
shadow? I'm not sure, but I'm ready for spring
weather to stick around for a while. I'm also
ready to tell you the FWA blog for NE Florida writers has been updated with
the March post listing area meetings and
events.

No matter if it comes in
like a lion and out like a lamb, or the other way
around, March will be here whether we like it or
not. Read the blog post and enjoy your
weekend.

Prize-winning
workshop
to start new series of classes

beginning
Mar. 26

A writing workshop on a shanty boat
docked on the Trout River will begin a new
series of classes on Wednesday, March 26,
according to freelance writer and editor of
Closet Books, Lynn Skapyak Harlin, leader of
the workshop.

Shanty boat Writers Workshop is designed for
beginning writers who would like to learn new
techniques, or seasoned writers who would like to
refresh these skills to improve their writing. Fiction
and nonfiction writers are welcome. Topics include
Creating believable characters, Tips for Improving
Dialogue, Elements of Plot, How 'Show rather than
Tell' works toward clarity in all forms of writing and
many other writing and submission tips.

Members of recent classes have won awards in
the contests of the Florida First Coast Writers'
Festival and other national awards.

The evening session meets every Wednesday
from 6 to 9, and the cost of the workshop (limited to
8 writers) will be $150 for six weeks.

Before attending a workshop all new workshop
writers must write and submit an introductory essay
according to workshop guidelines. For more information
on all sessions forming or to reserve a space, call
Ms. Skapyak Harlin at 778-8000 or e-mail her at lyharlin@aol.com

Colin
McEnroe’s “To Wit” column in The Courant tries to cut
a path through the brambles of educational babbling.
He is as exasperated as George Orwell was with
“Politics and the English Language” and Malcolm Cowley
with “Sociological Habit Patterns in Linguistic
Transmogrifications.” http://touch.courant.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-79199774/

The Ghostwriting
Business

Did you know
that the ghostwriter for Lee Iacocca’s autobiography had
the first version rejected? It was too finely
written and had to be done over to sound like the
gruff auto exec. Ghostwriters may be hidden from
the public or may be identified on the title page
and cover with “written with” or “as told to.” The
big giant in ghostwriting, of course, was the
creator of the assembly-line approach for books
for teens about the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and
the Rover Boys. http://priceonomics.com/the-ghostwriting-business/

Self-publishing: is it
killing the mainstream?

Damien G.
Walter notes in The Guardian that going it alone in
genre fiction is beginning to look like a much more
dependable route to success. Says he: “[T]he reality
is that advances for mid-list writers are often no
more than $5,000. [Brenna] Aubrey's deal of $120,000
was significant, but would have been split across
three novels, divided with her agent and paid in
instalments. When she cranked the figures Aubrey
realised that – even as a debut author –
self-publishing offered far more potential reward.”

David Byrne, a
founding member of Talking Head, writes in his blog
about song-writing, new hybrid forms for prose and
music, and the relationship between lyrics and
narration and dialogue. Quoting Stephen Sondheim, he
says a writer must “first ask: (1) what it is that the
song tries to say; (2) what sort of character
sings the song; and (3) what other contingencies might
the song need to address in the context of a specific
show. These factors should dictate what you write, not
some urge to be clever or to sound like what is
currently popular.” http://davidbyrne.com/content-dictates-form

How Physical
Health Supercharges Creativity

Herbert Lui
explains that a healthy lifestyle will improve
creative endeavors. For writers, couch potatoes seldom
make it to the keyboard or the legal pads to work on
the Great American Novel/Short Fiction
Collection/Poetry Chapbook. Alas, they lie there as
Fate mashes them and pours gravy on them. https://medium.com/busy-building-things/18f8b50c4139

“Who Killed Bambi?”

A Screenplay

The late Roger Ebert’s
website is still up (and maintained by his widow
Chaz). It archives a script he wrote for a film
project entitled “Who Killed Bambi?” The film was
to be directed by Russ Meyer and to revolve around
the Sex Pistols. Ebert says:

“Until recently, science
fiction creators had to imagine alien planets,
without knowing that much about real-life
exoplanets. But in the past 20 years, we've
discovered over 1,000 confirmed exoplanets, and
learned a lot more in the process.” With this in
mind,

Charlie Jane Andersasked six experts to identify the
biggest mistakes they see in fictional habitable
worlds.

According to Alison Flood in The Guardian,
Lynn Shepherd, author of such historical crime novels
as “Murder at Mansfield Park,” “Tom-All-Alone's” (U.S.
title “The Solitary House”) and” A Treacherous
Likeness” (published in the U.S. as “A Fatal
Likeness”), set off a storm of protest in a Huffington
Post column by suggesting that the Harry Potter author has “had her turn” and is harming
others' prospects. If nothing else, the hullabaloo
does suggest these insights: It’s none of one author’s
business what another author writes…Not every notion
is worthy of an opinion piece…Don’t criticize another
author if you have never read anything by that author.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/27/crime-author-urges-jk-rowling-stop-writing

The

Wrong
Stuff:

This
Month’s

Findings of
a

Forensic

Grammarian

By HOWARD
DENSON

Follow the
link below to find where often sane and sensible
writers (and editors) have stumbled in their writing:

The list
includes novelists, poets, playwrights, nonfiction
authors, writers for the small and silver screen, and
others.

Looking for
your favorite writer? Hit “find” at the website and
type in your favorite’s name. Keep scrolling to find
writers born in other months.

.

With
misgivings, the list generally omits lyricists (to
avoid the plethora of garage-band guitarists who knock
out a lyric in two minutes to go with a tune). Often
lyricists are accomplished in other writing areas and
may cause their inclusion (e.g., Bob Dylan, Johnny
Mercer, Cole Porter).

.

Unfortunately,
some writers fret about identity theft and will only
say they were born in 1972 or whenever. Typically that
means they don’t get included on a “born this day”
list. Recommendation: Writers may wish to create a
“pen birthday”; that way, their names stay on the
public’s radar.

.

If you see
that we have omitted a writer, give us his or her name
(and preferably a way to verify the belly-button day).

.

Want to read an ebook

but don’t have

a Kindle or Nook ereader?

Most readers are still relying on
old-fashioned books (which don’t need batteries),
but they may still feel unsettled when an ebook
arrives. They don’t have a Kindle, Nook, or a
generic readers. What are they to do?

Maloy says that other e-readers (like Sony)
will have instructions on their websites on how to
get the app onto your preferred machine. (Scroll
down in this newsletter to see a book by Maloy that
[hint, hint] you might be interested in.)

NFW
suspends

dues
indefinitely

The North
Florida Writers has suspended its membership dues for
an indefinite period. The treasury has stabilized at a
comfortable level, and the NFW does not have any
appreciable expenses. Members suspected we could go
without dues for a couple of years and perhaps more.
During this period, anyone may attend and participate
in the monthly meetings. (Even with dues, writers were
free to attend a few meetings to see if the NFW would
suit their needs.)